SEX AND SOCIAL MEDIA SocietyNow SocietyNow: short, informed books, explaining why our world is the way it is, now. The SocietyNow series provides readers with a definitive snapshot of the events, phenomena and issues that are defining our 21st century world. Written leading experts in their fields, and publishing as each subject is being contemplated across the globe, titles in the series offer a thoughtful, concise and rapid response to the major political and economic events and social and cultural trends of our time. SocietyNow makes the best of academic expertise accessible to a wider audience, to help readers untangle the complexities of each topic and make sense of our world the way it is, now. Poverty in Britain: Causes, Consequences, and Myths Tracy Shildrick The Trump Phenomenon: How the Politics of Populism Won in 2016 Peter Kivisto Becoming Digital: Towards a Post-internet Society Vincent Mosco Understanding Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union Graham Taylor Selfies: Why We Love (and Hate) Them Katrin Tiidenberg Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online Crystal Abidin Corbynism: A Critical Approach Matt Bolton The Smart City in a Digital World Vincent Mosco Kardashian Kulture: How Celebrities Changed Life in the 21st Century Ellis Cashmore Reality Television: The TV Phenomenon that Changed the World Ruth A. Deller Drones: The Brilliant, the Bad, and the Beautiful Andy Miah Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting Trine Syvertsen The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach Helen Jefferson Lenskyj Tiidenberg and van der Nagel have crafted an engaging yet sophisticated introduction to the complexities of contemporary sexualities and social media. This book explores key theoretical concepts by means of concrete examples, foregrounding media users’ own accounts of their explorations of digital intimacy and sexual self-expression. It is lively and easy to read without oversimplifying the complexity of platform policies, local regulatory systems, and the ways sex and gender politics play out among social media users. This book will be invaluable for researchers, students and practitioners in the fields of sexuality and gender studies, health promotion and education, media studies and internet studies. Kath Albery, Professor of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia This is a wonderful book clearly outlining the ways that sex and social media increasingly intersect. It is both incisive and highly accessible and will be invaluable for scholars, students and all those with an interest in sex, society and media. Feona Attwood, Editor, Porn Studies, Sexualities, and Professor of Cultural Studies Communication & Media, Middlesex University London, UK Deep yet accessible, entertaining yet hugely informative, this book explores sex and social media in their startling complexity. It is compulsory reading for parents, educators, journalists, IT professionals and policymakers alike. Susanna Paasonen, Professor of Media Studies, University of Turku, Finland SEX AND SOCIAL MEDIA KATRIN TIIDENBERG Tallinn University, Estonia EMILY VAN DER NAGEL Monash University, Australia United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2020 Copyright © 2020 Katrin Tiidenberg and Emily van der Nagel Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-83909-409-5 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-83909-406-4 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-83909-408-8 (Epub) CONTENTS List of Figures ix About the Authors xi Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 1. The Trifecta of Anxieties about Sex and Social Media 19 2. Social Media Platforms as the Shapers of Sex 51 3. Sexual Practices on Social Media 79 4. Sex, Identities, and Social Media 109 5. Sex, Communities, and Relationships on Social Media 135 Conclusion 163 References 171 Index 191 vii This page intentionally left blank LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 The Trifecta of Anxieties. 21 Figure 2 Moral Panics about Sex and Social Media. 30 Figure 3 A “Butt Selfie” from Kat’s NSFW Research. 94 ix This page intentionally left blank ABOUT THE AUTHORS Katrin Tiidenberg, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Social Media and Visual Culture at the Baltic Film, Media, Arts and Communication School of Tallinn University, Estonia. She is the author of Selfies: why we love (and hate) them, as well as Body and Soul on the Internet – making sense of social media (in Estonian). Tiidenberg is on the Executive Board of the Association of Internet Researcher and the Estonian Young Academy of Sciences. She is currently writing and publishing on sex, social media, visual social media practices, and digital research ethics. More info at: http://kkatot.tumblr.com/ Emily van der Nagel, PhD, is a Lecturer in Social Media in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University in Australia. She has been published in M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture, Media International Australia, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Internet Histories, and First Monday. Emily researches social media identities, platforms, and cultures. She tweets at @emvdn, and is online at http://emvdn.net/. xi This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a book across the very different time zones of Estonia and Australia, to a tight deadline, about a topic that twisted in our hands like a snake as social media platforms radically changed their rules and users outraged, was no small endeavor, but it has been an incredibly enjoyable and endlessly fascinating process. We’d like to thank the amazing Association of Internet Researchers, the incredible conferences of which brought us together, allowed us to discover each other’s work, and finally led to us collaborating on this book. We are grateful to our colleague Dr Alexandra James, who read and commented on the manuscript – thank you for your keen eye, your attentive comments, and your enthusiasm. We are also very grateful to our wise, open-minded editor Jen McCall, a self-professed “prude,” who nonetheless wanted our sex book. We love you Jen. But more than anything we would like to thank our research participants – the fascinating, beautiful, brilliant, and kind people who gave us their time and their attention. You allowed us into your lives, your spaces, your communities. You welcomed us and talked to us. You showed us around and introduced us to others. Thank you! There would be no book, if it weren’t for you, and we would personally be significantly more boring people. May the Patron Saint of xiii xiv Acknowledgements Nudes always smile upon you. We will keep fighting for the right to be sexy on social media. Further, Kat would like to thank the precious colleagues researching sex and the internet for the inspiration, everyone she’s met at an academic conference who did not make a funny face when she said she’s been studying nudes, and of course, her husband and her son, for so graciously living with a partner/mother who writes. All the time. Emily would like to thank her PhD supervisors Esther Milne, Anthony McCosker, and Rowan Wilken, for their guidance and care as she researched social media pseudo- nymity and Reddit Gonewild for her thesis, and her family’s love, support, and enthusiasm for her work over the years: her parents Leanne and Andrew; sisters Nicole and Jo; and part- ner Dan. INTRODUCTION At one point when we were in the editing stages of writing this book, Kat, frustrated by the content moderation and com- munity management policies of Facebook Inc, was searching for an alternative to Instagram. Kat has a private Instagram account that she mostly uses for sharing snapshots of everyday life with family and close friends. You know. A family album. A private album. So she typed: “best app for a private photo album” into Google and… immediately realized that a “private photo album” wasn’t what she assumed. The first result from Google was from a 2019 news story comparing the best apps to hide – i.e., make private – the photos and videos on your phone. Why would you want to do that? The rest of the search results explain. The second result was a link to a story titled: “Secret apps to hide private sexy pictures on your phone,” and the third was: “6 secret apps to hide your sexy photos.” We’ve both been studying how, why, and where people share sexy photos for years, but we still find it noteworthy that “sexy pictures” has become a legitimate enough category of personal snapshot photography and smartphone use to 1 2 Sex and Social Media warrant development of new applications or new functional- ities for our devices, and to take up the whole first page of Google search results. Nudes, it seems, are part of everyday life. Somewhat controversially then, various instant messaging apps and social networking platforms wherein these nudes are often edited and shared, have introduced a crop of changes, which are broadly unified by an attempt to push sex out. 2018 and 2019 saw Community Guidelines and Terms of Service rules of many social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Insta- gram, Tumblr) updated to forbid sexual imagery, sexual talk, and even posts that combine certain emoji with certain sexual words (e.g., the eggplant emoji and the word “horny”).